Not too much happens in the sleepy little town of Timber Ridge, North Carolinawhich is fine with pizza-purveyor extraordinaire Eleanor Swift. The spunky owner of A Slice of Delight is trying to mend her broken heart and could use a little quiet time. But when a late night delivery customer turns up dead, she's in for just the opposite in this delicious mystery series debut, featuring pizza as the prima character . . .

I feel like I've been seeing a bunch of those lately -- take some mundane thing, and build a series of murder mysteries around it. There's a sudoku on, and several different knitting/crocheting ones, and I think I've seen a bakery one, too.

Joined: Fri Apr 01, 2011 11:51 amPosts: 5874Location: United States of New England

honestly i think this is a whole sub genre. when i worked in a bookstore i remember very well cheesily titled mysteries like these. some were food themed some where garden themed some were sewing themed......

Cozy mysteries are a very well-defined subgenre. They need a puzzle, a narrow setting or focus, usually an amateur detective a la Miss Marple, and not really much violence. Many are very good. In general, mystery readers don't have a lot of tolerance for cheesy plots that aren't clever, so any of the series that gain any sort of following are usually good.

I read one from a series that was based around dog shows, my mother in law picked it up for me at the library on a lark. I had to laugh at it but felt it was pretty cheesy and the ending was too obvious.

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